What exactly is a public military event?
How loose is the military connection?
The thing on s/point, refers to the police’s unease with the way RAFAC conduct themselves at public military events and lists things like not travelling to/from in civvies or covered up and not having someone stay with SOVs emblazoned with Air Cadet this and that. God knows what Police this is, as we haven’t seen the Police at any parade other than if one turns up to lay a wreath.
The irony is with the travelling to and from, you can spot military in big plain white coaches, unless they’ve cottoned and now use ones with names on.
The only vaguely military thing we do are remembrance parades and even vaguer in terms of militaryness cadet parades.
I read that as: in uniform outside the wire? best let the police know you’re bag packing/handing out water at the town’s fun run so they know you’re out and about…
So what are they going to do if you’ve got half a dozen cadets out, send down a couple of cars to keep an eye on them?
If not it’s waste of time and effort on our part.
This why im jacking in.Its another form to add to the mountain of other stuff we do.I was told last year for a church service that cadets travel to independently and then go home that I should tell the Police about it.WHY! having worked in the Police for 14 yrs I know what response it would get.That is to say none at all.I very much doubt the call handler in the control room would even raise a job on the system for it.That is of course if you can be bothered to be on hold for 30 mins when you dial 101.For major military events like remembrance /Battle of Britain that are actual parades ok but really some of the stuff coming out is really over the top.Will we soon be asked to fill in forms and have to tell the Police because cadets travel to the sqn in uniform?
Yep and watch it be ignored as always.Anyway wont our white hatted friends be too busy wandering round RAFAC sqns checking the wonderful new security orders.Have to keep the lads busy.
If you are not sure what the PME form is and requirements are speak to RAFP at HQAC they are more than happy to help. While it is the subject of confusion and jokes it’s there to try and protect us and help the police do so, yes they are unlikely to send 6 patrols, but will use local Int to advise us of any risks etc
Interestingly, we are moving towards ditching PMEs for normal local ACF events. It is only larger scale parades where we are now required to submit them or where we think we might be in a dodgy area.
I haven’t done anything about them since remembrance day, when my PIPE was rejected for not mentioning it. Since then, no one in my wing has mentioned them at all.
I would have thought any large gathering has the potential to attract the current bunch of nutters to cause mayhem, not just “military” events or where “military” might be, even pseudo pretend military like what we are. Do they ‘attack’ re-enactment events where everyone is a Brigadier or higher.
So should the police be telling the organisers of all events that there is a threat (but not to the point where it’s like the met office suggesting the threat of rain etc at every turn) and in turn they tell us. Why we have to contact the police is a load of baffling BS, when the police haven’t told event organisers.
Because there are some nutters out there who are happy to kill kids. Just look at Manchester. I know the paper work is a pain, but I’d rather be safe than sorry. If it only makes my cadets 1% safer, they’re still safer. Not worth taking a risk with these scum in my opinion.
The ACF who are on the the same Army Reserve Centre as us routinely swarm the local area in uniform. Considering people have been arrested within a few streets on terrorism charges I just can’t believe the laissez-faire attitude of their staff. Our lot are either dropped right at the gates by car or if they walk or cycle cover their uniform or can keep their uniform at squadron and change there.
Was there a known threat at that moment or beforehand?
Did anyone know they were going to do it beforehand?
Would have asking made any difference?
Was it a PME? Do we do this for everything we do?
If there is thought to be a problem, organisers should be told, so they can pass it on. If you take some large towns / cities, there could be several squadrons on a remembrance parade, do each of those squadrons do the paperwork OR could the police not just tell the organisers who then tells the participants and they make a call as to whether or not they turn up? The organisers then decide whether to go ahead or not.
Take the incidents with vehicles, someone hires an ordinary vehicle or just uses their own, drives somewhere and ploughs into a crowd. Totally random and arbitrary. I would guarantee if say a group of cadets had been on Westminster Bridge say, HQAC would have been rampant about it. But who knew it was coming even as the vaguest of threats.
You know the solution, cadets don’t do anything outside of parade nights. Life would be so much easier.
Growing up in the 60s and 70s with the Cold War threat of MAD and NI troubles it was clear crap happens and you cannot mitigate for every single incident, I don’t ever remember anyone stopping anything or even asking. I suppose you lived under the constant threat and accepted it. One of my uncles’ and his family missed the Warrington bin bombs by about an hour. They heard about it on the radio on the way home. That was a random as things get.
This is typical knee jerking with no real guidance or advice as to what to do, other than don’t bother.
The whole point of doing a PME is to make sure that the police know an event is taking place so that they can give advice if it’s deemed necessary.
You ask if there is a current threat and if anyone was told. The whole threat matrix is public and is published online by the security services and is replicated online on most if not all police websites.
We have been at Severe consistently, which means that an attack is highly likely.
It’s not a bad idea for the organisation to expect us to take precautions especially at pre-planned and pre-advertised events and since the PME process already exists it makes sense to use it where necessary. (The flow chart is very clear about when you need to do it and it’s not for everything).
i would be tempted to point the finger at the security state - if the “bikini” state (as I will forever remember it) is such that we should be on guard often enough that large gatherings are feared then yes absolutely complete a PME
according to MI5 (https://www.mi5.gov.uk/threat-levels) we’ve been at least Severe since August 2014 yet PMEs only came to our attention November 17??
excuse my ignorance, but if i am more at threat/should be more fearful - up the security level. if the resolution isn’t fine enough the system is broken, but to me if the security level is “Severe” today and it was last week then the same threat risk exists…thus if we got away without PMEs since 2014, why is the last 6 months suddenly of interest?
i am not sure its even as high as 1% - we’re simply letting the police know.
when i did this for Remembrance they thanked me for making an enquiry but also seemed perplexed i was going to such an effort - the impression i got was it was noted down but not actioned to anything more.
as i read the flow chart it IS for everything…
“If it is a Minor Event…where the event has not been pre-publicised, ensure civilian police have been informed”
that is as minor as they come. None advertised events, the flow chart even suggests directly bag-packing which as a collection of half a dozen Cadets doing nothing more significant than food shopping, except in uniform*, to me indicates “PME for everything”
*ok so they are only doing part of the grocery shopping experience and it last 4-6 hours, but who is going to put together a threat in that time??
A PME is a formal process for a public event which will be passed to a specialist department for grading and action if required.
Just informing the police (say for a bag pack) is a courtesy and should be as minor as raising a CAD just so that they are aware oin case there are any issues. (The same as if you are going hunting in a non-rural environment, you ring 101 and let the know just in case).
IMO this is one of those completely unnecessary admin burden things that could and should be automated, or at the very least done by paid staff.
The form if I remember it correctly is lengthy, time consuming and often asks for over the top information.
You can bet that 99/100 the police are going to file it and do nothing with it. The 1 time they will is when there will be other targets present anyway - Armed Forces Day, Remembrance Sunday etc.
The whole concept is one of my biggest current annoyances with the organisation (and there are several).
I agree it should be an automated process. When a Bader application is completed with certain fields it should ping an email to a force based on the units location with all the details in it.
Pretty much the same was TOPL should be done for AT, it just pings an email to the local brigade with the route on it or similar.